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And long after, in Hell, Judas they say was given one day's respite at the end of every year because of this one kindness he had done so long since in his youth. And every year he goes, they say, for a day and cools himself among the Arctic bergs; once every year for century after century.
Captain Dow retraced his course to the northeast and, after an hour's steaming, laid a new course for Fire Island buoy. The presence of the great bergs and accompanying masses of field-ice so very early in the season was most unusual. Into this desolate waste of sea came the Titanic on Sunday evening.
Directly in their way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against which they were alternately thumping and grinding, lay a group of bergs. There was no possibility of avoiding them, and the only question was, whether they were to be dashed to pieces on their hard blue sides, or, perchance, in some providential nook to find a refuge from the storm.
In the course of the day, several heavy masses of ice came drifting by with a breeze from the N.E., which is here about two points upon the land, and made a considerable swell. One mass came in contact with our bergs, which, though only held by the cables, brought it up in time to prevent mischief.
It is evident that there may be very great possibilities in the use of this light for signalling purposes and I propose to have some experiments. N.B. Magnesium flashlight as signalling apparatus in the summer. Another crab-eater seal was secured to-day; he had come up by the bergs. Monday, June 5. The wind has been S. all day, sky overcast and air misty with snow crystals.
The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvellous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isle of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a June thaw! It was exceedingly fine. What did we talk about? We talked about the weather and you!
And all these things I used to turn over and over in my heart during the sultry night-watches in the West Indies, when the heat lightnings gleamed incessantly all round the horizon, and it was too hot to sleep even when off duty; and during the grimmer watches round about Newfoundland, with the fog as thick as wool inside and outside one, and the smell of the floating bergs in the air; and most of all when we were plunging homeward as fast as we could make it, and the call of Carette drew my heart faster than my body, till my body fairly ached for sight and sound of her.
Being acquainted, by hearsay at least, with some of the methods of the Eskimos, he avoided the bergs, for there was the danger of masses falling from their sides and from overhanging ice-cliffs, and selected a small hummock a heap of masses that had been thrown or crushed up earlier in the winter, covered with snow, and formed into a solid mound.
The talk washed back and forth across the hulks of classic sea mysteries, new and old; of the City of Boston, which went down with all hands, leaving for record only a melancholy scrawl on a bit of board to meet the wondering eyes of a fisherman on the far Cornish coast; of the Great Queensland, which set out with five hundred and sixty-nine souls aboard, bound by a route unknown to a tragic end; of the Naronic, with her silent and empty lifeboats alone left, drifting about the open sea, to hint at the story of her fate; of the Huronian, which, ten years later, on the same day and date, and hailing from the same port as the Naronic, went out into the void, leaving no trace; of Newfoundland captains who sailed, roaring with drink, under the arches of cathedral bergs, only to be prisoned, buried, and embalmed in the one icy embrace; of craft assailed by the terrible one-stroke lightning clouds of the Indian Ocean, found days after, stone blind, with their crews madly hauling at useless sheets, while the officers clawed the compass and shrieked; of burnings and piracies; of pest ships and slave ships, and ships mad for want of water; of whelming earthquake waves, and mysterious suctions, drawing irresistibly against wind and steam power upon unknown currents; of stout hulks deserted in panic although sound and seaworthy; and of others so swiftly dragged down that there was no time for any to save himself; and of a hundred other strange, stirring and pitiful ventures such as make up the inevitable peril and incorrigible romance of the ocean.
Leaving the dangerous vicinity of the bergs, they afterwards kept more inshore. "What can yonder mound be?" said Fred, pointing to an object that was faintly seen at a short distance off upon the bleak shore. "An Esquimaux hut, maybe," replied Grim. "What think'ee, Meetuck?" Meetuck shook his head and looked grave, but made no reply.
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